


Estinto

by Gheloured



Series: Take these unholy hands [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Agni is a song spirit AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fire Nation Lore (Avatar), Firebending & Firebenders, Gen, Ghosts, Gratuitous sea chanties, I love my lovely betas, Iroh (Avatar) is a Good Uncle, Iroh (Avatar) loves Tea, Not the alcohol kind, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, Spirits, Storms, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, Zuko gets taken on a life changing feild trip 2 years early by thousands of spirits, Zuko is 14 in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:28:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25160122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gheloured/pseuds/Gheloured
Summary: The position of the Fire Lord originated from the head of the Fire Sages who sung to Agni, for Agni was a spirit of song. The position of the Fire Lord was to be the spiritual leader of the nation, the one who was most in tune with the wishes of Agni, and who’s fire was therefore the most holy. The position of the Fire lord was supposed to be the spiritual leader of the nation.It had not been that way for many years.(OR, Zuko, in being cast out, brings a hundred years worth of dead soldiers with him)
Relationships: Agni & Zuko (Avatar), Eventually - Relationship, Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar), Zuko & The Fire Nation (Avatar), Zuko & Zuko's Crew (Avatar)
Series: Take these unholy hands [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2000962
Comments: 83
Kudos: 654
Collections: The Witch's Woods





	Estinto

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, author here. Song spirit Agni lives rent free in my brain and now you have to deal with it as well.

I.

Sometimes, when Zuko lay down at night, he could feel the weight of the dead pressing down on his chest. He could barely breathe for the heaviness, the burden crushing his lungs until he couldn’t even try to sleep. Every time that happened, Zuko would get up and make the painstaking journey to the front of the ship, leaning under low beams and past the guard on their nightly duties. He stumbled in the dark, holding a hand to protect the wick of the candle from the sea spray on the wind, leaving his nightclothes to get soaked. The stars would shimmer on the water and the pressure grew stronger while he set the candle down in front of him. He knelt and set his face to look towards the sky, praying to Agni that their souls would be at rest, that they would return to the flame that kept their bodies in life. Every time, the people would become less like guilt and more like a soothing pressure, hands placed against his body as they gazed out against the sea.

If the hour was late enough, and the moon bright enough, the spirits would whisper a song so delicate any breeze would blow it away, and those were the times that Zuko knew what this all meant. Why he was here, what he had lost. What the world had lost. What his people had lost. And he knew then, that these were his people and they were angry. They sang of their injustices, sometimes calmly, sometimes pleading, but always so very quiet. It did not feel right to sing his own song, his own prayer to Agni over their own haunting refrains.

Zuko never was able to sleep after he heard them, their harmonies echoing in his ears for hours after as he sat there on the deck waiting for the sun to rise. The crew always took care to stay out of Zuko’s way after they woke up to him staring out to sea, the quiet disturbing them more than when he screamed orders at them. Uncle would inevitably show up with a hot cup of tea and the presence of something real. Zuko would stay still for a few moments, eyes closed in the childish hope that none of this was real, but eventually he accepted the offered cup.

Today was one of those mornings, and the bone porcelain was heavy and solid in his hands. He felt untethered more than usual, enough that he couldn’t contain his treasonous thoughts about the Firelord and they almost spilled out of his mouth. But no, he was the loyal son, and even after a year (a _year_ ) he would not speak any of his doubts aloud. He had learned his lesson. Now the only thing left was to return and get everything back, to see father again. 

The pressure was suffocating, the porcelain crushing the fragile bones of his hand under its weight. Zuko forced himself to take a breath: in, hold, out. A breath of meditation, the rhythm of Agni’s heartbeat. It still shuddered on the way out. 

Uncle sat still and looked out over the sea, the hush of the waves too quiet below the clink of his teacup. Slowly, as if Zuko were a wild animal, he turned his gaze onto Zuko’s untouched tea and spoke in measured words.

“It is your birthday in a few days, Prince Zuko. Is there anything you want?”

“I want my honor,” Zuko whispered, “I want to go home.” The response became automatic over so many times Uncle had asked that same question. It was the perfect response, the one of a determined Prince, of a proper fire nation citizen, but not of Zuko. Uncle Iroh sighed deeply, from his bones in the way only the world-weary did.

“Zuko, I cannot give you that, I’m sorry.” Uncle looked at him, read his soul with the fiery gaze of the Dragon of the West. Zuko could not look at him, not with the sputtering flame of a soul he had. “Is there anything else you want?” 

“No, Uncle. Nothing,” Zuko lied. He would be fourteen years old in two days, at home he would be presented to the public again as finally being of age for more responsibilities. On the sea he would be presented with a useless crew and ways to become obsolete. Feeling nausea roil in his gut, Zuko set the cup down on the deck in front of him and stood. It felt like he hadn’t moved in forever. “I’m going back to my cabin, Uncle. Don’t disturb me today.”

As Zuko walked away, he saw Uncle reaching towards him unconsciously out of the corner of his good eye. He retreated into the shadows of the ship, a cloak of the dead drowning him in cold, grasping fingers. He reached the shadows of his cabin, and simply sat on his futon in the dark. The walls pressed in on him, the air lay heavy and thick and unbreathable. 

Drowning him. Suffocating him. 

Zuko’s breath shuddered in his chest. How many had died to form a weight like this? How many had been killed in this war. How long had they been waiting to return to Agni. Why would the Fire Lord shirk his duty? (Why would they continue a war gone on too long?) Something in his body wavered and died.

He choked. Startled, he stood up and shook his head as if to dispel the incessant gnawing doubt. He had to get some light in here. Zuko looked to the lights on the wall and thrust out a hand, trying to shoot out a line of flame.

Nothing.

The weight became a chill coursing through his veins. _Nothing._

The prince of a nation, and he couldn’t even bend. What a disgrace. What a shameful, disgusting thing. Abandoned by Agni, starting at his birth in the dead of winter. His passion siphoned away just because he had been on a mission for a few months. The useless, banished prince.

The prince who still had duties to attend to, scrolls to study. A prince who couldn’t waste time despairing. He _would_ get his fire back. But first he would take another look at the quartermaster’s papers.

II.

The position of the Fire Lord originated from the head of the Fire Sages who sung to Agni, for Agni was a spirit of song. The position of the Fire Lord was to be the spiritual leader of the nation, the one who was most in tune with the wishes of Agni, and who’s fire was therefore the most holy. The position of the Fire lord was _supposed_ to be the spiritual leader of the nation. 

It had not been that way for many years.

Sozin had never taken stock in spirits and famously disregarded the ceremonies and traditions that came with the mantle of Fire Lord. His successor, Azulon, had never looked at his position beyond his complacency with the war effort, his violence born from ignorance on the true motives behind his father’s war. Ozai and Iroh, when they were still young, still able to share a table without becoming rabid porcupine-dogs, had studied where the position came from. One took it to heart, the other only cared about the shining gold of power. Zuko and Azula were raised by a man who only knew hatred, and both rushed to please him.

Zuko had never seen his father pray. Not truly. Ozai had reassured the people by going back to pomp and ceremony, but that was all it was. When Zuko was eight there had been one such celebration on the summer solstice. Ozai had told him to hide his shamefully weak flames and immediately turned to the crowds with a beatific smile on his face. His eyes were hollow, fire steady with the assurance of the people and not crackling with the desire to grow closer to Agni for the sake of the world. Ozai’s fire was always steady, and all of his clothes were the red of dried blood tipped with the gold of a man who could afford it. When he sung the prayers over the people, his voice was perfectly in tune, the melody precise and unabating, passionless. 

When the ceremony was over, the sun just falling from its zenith, Zuko rushed back to his room to catch the last rays of Agni’s most powerful time. He prayed for himself, true prayers, selfish little songs wondering if he could ever be as good as his sister, ever be good enough for father. He wondered if Agni only listened to the prayers of the sages, or if his flame was just too weak to reach him. 

Zuko was ashamed, had been shamed by his weakness. There was no place for kindness in fire, in destruction, in what he had become. Zuko did not pray for himself any longer.

The duty of the Fire Lord did not only extend to ruling, it meant leading the people back to Agni’s flame if ever they strayed. They were people of fire and would always rise from the ashes of their funeral pyres. They needed a conduit to reach all the way to the sun, and the only one with that amount of weight was the Fire Lord. That was why they needed one. That was their purpose in the world.

Ozai did not pray to Agni, neither had his father, nor had his father’s father. There had been a war going on for a hundred years, decades washing away the corpses of soldiers and civilians. Their spirits dragged after the one who would return them to that sacred flame.

The Fire Lord had not prayed to Agni for a hundred years.

III.

The rocking of the ship kept splashing the wax of the candles onto the wicks, putting them out and interrupting his concentration. Zuko inhaled, stoked his inner flame, and attempted to light the fires yet again. Only sparks flickered from his fingertips. Barely enough to relight the candles, barely enough to be worth it by the time the next wave rocked the ship. Frowning, a strange mixture of frustration and resignation, Zuko stumbled out onto the deck.

They were supposed to have been in port a few hours ago for some official shore leave and Uncle’s unofficial celebration of his birthday, but the bad weather had delayed their arrival. Zuko didn’t care much for parties. They were stiff, formal things, steeped in politics and whispers of whatever court gossip had come up recently. With a strange ache in his chest (why would he miss _court_ ) he realized that this would be his first birthday without his father there to celebrate. Certainly nobody really wanted to celebrate Zuko’s birthday, least of all himself, but the sentiment of getting to sit at the same table as his father was precious to him. 

Now? Now he was alone. The crew hated him, Uncle was… well, Uncle, and he was out at the lonely sea, Agni and Tui taking turns watching over his being but never reaching out to place a hand on him, too busy in their eternal game of chase to take time for an insignificant, selfish child.

So no, here he had only himself and the thousands of restless spirits hanging heavy off of his limbs. They shifted and clutched at his flesh, swarming away from the water washing up from the ever-heightening waves. La was upset today, and whichever spirit ruled the winds had draped a cloud veil across the dome of the sky, hiding the pale gray-blue of winter. The crew fought against the waves, calling orders to the engineers down message lines that snaked through the entire ship. They did not stop even as Zuko passed them, which he was grateful for, because the rhythm of the line was mesmerizing.

Everything in perfect order, the absolute trust that your crewmate knew what they were doing, the ripples of one voice to another all the way down the ship, flowing like blood through veins, pumped through the heart of something unknown. Steady in the face of the storm, like the ship was a beast of the sea with one heart and one mind. A creature of fire, like the fierceness of the Painted Lady’s healing flame, thrumming with the energy of dozens of inner flames rippling over each other, and Zuko was there in the center of it. An eye of the storm, approaching the eye of another. 

Zuko was broken out of- whatever that was by another sudden gust of wind, knocking him into a railing and almost overboard. A wave splashed over his face and he almost lost his grip with how hard he coughed up the sea water in his lungs. The salt stung the back of his nose and settled in the rough tissue of his scar. He hauled himself upright and stumbled to lay his body against the mast, clinging to the rain-chilled metal for support. Still, still, the beat did not stop, and it thumped through the ship. The tempest lashed its winds higher.

Catching his breath, Zuko looked up, squinting against the torrential rain, trying to spot if anyone was in the albatross-crow’s nest, but it was too dark to see and nothing could be heard beyond the howling of the wind and the pulse in his ears. Something stirred under his ribcage, and the iron-hard grip of the spirits’ fingers begame piercing with their fear of the sea. It laced into his blood and swam behind his vision. The metal of the ship creaked and bent, the mast curving terrifyingly high overhead. 

Another wave rocked the _Suzuran_ so far over until it almost fell into the water, the chains broken, the ship hemorrhaging with the loss of the beat. The crew’s inner fires became stoked high with their own fears at the sudden disconnect and the wrath of the storm. Everything faltered in a way that wasn’t acceptable to the throne, in the way that had them assigned on this wretched ship in the first place. The crewman in the albatross-crow’s nest shouted at them to _move, move, we’ll all die!_ Because another wave was coming and they wouldn’t make it if nothing happened.

It was then Zuko knew with a certainty that caught in the embers of his dim flame that if he didn’t do something _right now_ , the ship would keel over. 

As with all things Zuko did, he knew he wouldn’t be good at it. He didn’t know any of the work songs the crew sung, or even which one to pick for this situation, and the now-claws of the already drowned began to leave bloody pinpricks in his skin. There was no good way to firebend, not that it would help, his fire was too weak and what would it do anyway? His crew was falling and drowning and their eyes were sizzling in the salt that stung them and Zuko. couldn’t. do. anything.

He didn’t want to have to begin praying for them as well.

So Zuko did the only thing he would never give up on trying to do, no matter how foolish. Save his people. He turned to face the ladder and began to climb.

The rungs were slick with water but the cold that stung his hands kept him from falling off, serving as a reminder of the solidity of the construction, even though the _Suzuran_ was a decrepit old ship. The wind was stronger up here, and more than once Zuko was forced to stop and cling to the ladder, shutting his eyes for a few precious moments to clear away the water. He was almost there. He heard the shouts of the crew as they looked at him from the railings they clung to. The ship rose and bobbed with the waves, tilting and bringing Zuko closer to the water. 

Still he climbed, and as he did, the spirits lessened their hold on him. The fear he felt from the ghosts separated from his true feelings, his determination coursing through him once again as he reached the top. Clinging to the side of the albatross-crow’s nest was crewman Ito, shivering and wide-eyed as they spotted Zuko.

“S-sir?” Zuko didn’t respond, just finished climbing into the nest with them. Now that he was up here he had no idea how he was going to get both of them down. In the heat of the moment there was only terror that was not his and determination to see everyone through the storm. Ito shifted towards him, speaking again. “Sir, its dangerous, you have to go back to your cab-”

Another blast of wind and their words were blown away. Zuko looked over the side to see the deck. They couldn’t get down in this weather, it was too dangerous. So _think,_ what were his options, what were his resources. There was a coil of rope, a crewman, tired sparks of firebending, and whatever chi manipulation he could use while sitting down. And a hundred fearful spirits with sharp claws. 

Fearful spirits- but ones that sung songs. He prayed fervently that he would be heard.

“Ito, what are the songs you sing to deal with- whatever this is?” Zuko shouted.

“Sir?” Ito yelled over the wind. “There aren’t really songs for this type of situation, but anything with a proper beat and something to repeat will work. Try a bellows shanty?”

“Right. Agni, I hope this works.” He took a breath, not remotely properly, recalling the barest of a melody and thrust out words as loudly as he could. 

“Down on the main deck,

we’ve yet to be undone

is the wind-blown crew

praying for the sun

looking out to windward 

you can see the banner’s torn

and I wish that we could hurry up 

and get through this cursed storm”

He didn’t care for a melody, it didn’t have to be pretty, and it was rough in his throat, but they heard it, and they looked at him, a child of a commander that they resented having to serve under, and they waited, watched. Perhaps daring him to fall, or show his true colors as the failure prince. Ito looked at him, and nodded once. Zuko continued.

“Look alive, sun and bones

and let us get to shore

look well to the wind,

you can hear her mighty roar

Look at Uncle’s tea sets,

you can see that they all fell

and I wish that we could hurry up

And get through this cursed storm”

The crew was getting up, holding onto each other for support, forming back into the lines but never letting go. There were more on the deck, pulled together by a hand on the elbow. The crewman on the end of the line was just short of grabbing the mast, and Ito threw the rope down to him so he could hand something to hold onto. 

Breathless at the sudden response, Zuko’s words fled him for a moment. For all of his secret writings, the lyrics of the songs he had prayed with, all of his songcrafting skills fled him. But he still had work to do, and the spirits surrounding him were thrumming with nervous energy, shying away from the ocean sprays. 

“Down in the engine room,” He started, grasping for words before Ito joined him, their voices swelling over the storm.

“Miss Hanako stands

grasping at the billows

with her burned and calloused hands

looking scorch-eyed at the furnace,

And the coals begin to warm

and I wish that you would hurry up

and get through this damn storm!”

More heat, the song called for, to cut through the waves with the power of their engine. The message rippled through the line again, bringing back a shadow of the synchronicity that had been there before. Zuko’s fire rose with the beat of the song, the pulse of the music. Slowly, slowly, the ship began to move faster. Something wild in his body made him smile when he heard the voices of his crew ( _his_ crew) surge past the doubt and fear, and the sea salt gathered on his teeth as he joined them. 

“Look alive, sun and bones

and let us get to shore

look well to the wind,

you can hear her mighty roar

Look at Uncle’s tea sets,

you can see that they all fell

and I wish that we could hurry up

And get through this damn storm”

The eye was approaching, and his blood was singing, and for the first time in years, Zuko felt unburdened by the weight of the dead. They were in a chorus behind him, pushing them towards the promise of safety, their ship cutting through the water like a turtleduck through a pond. The storm didn’t matter in the surge of something far greater, and Zuko’s breath swelled with the movement of the inner flames of the people all around him. They moved onward, onward, until finally they broke into the eye of the storm.

Breaking from the song, the ship slowed, and Zuko and Ito slid down the ladder to join the rest of the crew. They spoke in those breathless voices, shaking with leftover adrenaline, thanking Agni that they had survived, welcoming Ito back to the land of the grounded. Zuko heard someone say to ‘go get the general, he’ll want to hear about this!’ and crewman Koharu brought her lover, Yuko close for a kiss.

Uncle walked out onto the deck, eagerly listening to Minato’s babbling about the storm and the prince’s surprisingly nice singing voice. Ito turned to Zuko, an island of content calm in the sea of joy. “Sir, what was all that glowing back there about? I was very nearly blinded because of the brilliance!”

“I...” Zuko blinked, startled, suspicious. “I don’t know what you're talking about. I didn’t see anything.”

“Oh, we all saw it, sir. Maybe you were too busy thinking up lyrics for that song up there to see it, but we all did.”

His tongue was dry in his mouth. He couldn’t let them know he had lost his firebending, and he couldn’t let Uncle know about the spirits that had been following him since he was a child and sung his first song to the sun. Zuko took a breath, exhaled, and composed his thoughts. He didn’t have time to panic. “Perhaps it was Agni, blessing our journey.”

“Agni always blesses those with the lungs of a dragon,” Ito accepted, nodding slightly before a grin split their face. They swung a hand against their thigh in excitement. “And whoo, sir you’ve got a nice couple o’ pipes if I might say so myself! And what a song! We might have to sing that one again sometime.”

“Of course,” Zuko replied. Now that the enthrallment he had been trapped in was over, the weight began to settle itself around him again, though this time it was with an air of contentment and comfort. He stood there for a moment, unsure of what he could do in the changed air of relief and happiness, so unlike the tenseness that usually lay over the ship when he entered a room. The deck was still sprinkled with droplets shining in the sun, and the eyes of the crew sparkled with just as much light, so unlike the dark and abandoned prince. His limbs trembled.

Uncle, noticing his nephew’s change in mood, excused himself with a smile and walked over to stand beside Zuko on his good side. He placed a hand on his back, solid in a way so many things seemed to escape being lately, and laughed. “Happy birthday, Prince Zuko.”

A smile threatened to escape him in front of the crew. He didn’t let it, but his voice was still soft as he said “Thank you, Uncle.”

  
  
  


IV.

Prayers had always been offered to Agni in song form, whether it be the gentlest of lullabies or the fiercest of war cries. It had been this way since the world first came into being, and would stay that way until Agni’s people died out. No matter where in the world you were, if any children of fire were alive to see the sun you would hear simple melodies for sewing and farming, and the louder ballads sung at noon when the sun was at its highest and Agni farthest overhead. There were the quiet hymns sung in the bedroom before bed, and the even quieter songs of waking and rising. Not all were prayers, in fact most of them were just the product of something to fill the air with, but Agni always listened.

Zuko had been raised with the promise of fire in his heart and the way to always have a song on his lips. When he was younger, before either he or Azula had shown even the barest hint of smoke, they would sit in the garden by the fire lilies and their mother would teach them about the beauty of music. She’d have them listen to the rustling of the wind in the trees and to their own heartbeats and the pure notes that came out of her throat. He remembered asking his mother how she could make such a beautiful noise, and if he could ever do the same, and he remembered her laugh as she said he already had. Azula just giggled in his lap. 

It was his mother who taught them to sing in fluting notes and whispering chants, in growls and the chesty voice she assured Zuko he would grow into one day. It was mother who taught them that Agni was a spirit of song, of passion, and that everything thrummed with a melody all its own. Azula would smile back then, as would he, because there was a warmth within them deeper than any summer heat, or any bright blue flames.

Before there was fire, there was music. Zuko was unafraid to hum when he read or walked through the halls past the portraits of his ancestors, Azula toddling behind him though she still didn’t understand how to walk and make music at the same time without losing her breath. It was then Zuko would pick her up and they’d run through the halls, high-pitched laughter echoing against the ceilings. 

If it wasn’t through his voice, Zuko would play through an instrument. A musical prodigy, they whispered of him. Ozai didn’t speak, didn’t need to. The light cast through his eyes was filled with disappointment at the child who couldn’t bend the tiniest flame until he was 7. Zuko learned how to tell who was in the hall by their footsteps, and the noise he made lessened so he could hear who was outside of his door.

Gradually, the halls grew quiet and still, a pristine picture of elegance. Zuko remembered the messy songs Azula used to sing when she was just learning to walk.

  
  
  


V.

It was a strange and tragic thing, Iroh reflected, to be able to see spirits and do nothing about it. They were more abundant and yet less common than you would think, traipsing behind the surfaces of shadows and the water that sloughed off the roofs in Caldera in the monsoon season. They played among themselves, preparing themselves for another cycle in their endlessly repetitive tasks, rarely stopping for mortals except when mortals reached out to them. They did not feel the same way mortals did, only caring for the rules of their existence and the traditions to be followed. Spirits were never fickle, but they were dangerous to bargain with nonetheless. They did not understand the depth of emotion, of the subtle ways people said what they didn’t mean, which was why Iroh was so concerned when Zuko’s guidance through the storm had been rumored to be spirit-blessed.

Iroh, once and always raised to be the leader of the nation, was a master of getting what he wanted. At first he was raised to do this through fear, and then later, when everything he was had been burned away, he had learned to be kind. And sometimes kindness was just as effective as a knife. 

“Skylark Ito, would you like to join me for tea?”

A few minutes later, with two cups of Iroh’s favorite jasmine smothering the scent of salves and bandages in the air, Iroh got down to figuring out what had actually happened on Zuko’s 14th birthday. 

“So, Ito, how are you? Have you recovered well from recent events?” 

“Yes, General.” They paused, sighed slightly, just weary enough to do so. “Though the infirmary isn’t ‘zactly where I like to spend my hours.”

After the storm, Ito had come down with a bad cough and slight fever. Their eyes were rimmed red though the salt that irritated them came not from tears. However, the sharp gaze that came from them wasn’t diminished by even a fraction. 

Iroh smiled brightly in the face of their scrutiny. “That’s good! And I know of nobody who likes to be holed up away from their hammock.” He held the cup up to his face, indulging in the smell.

“General? Can we cut the dilly dally? You just wanna know what happened up there on the perch.”

Iroh chuckled. “Of course. Isn’t an uncle allowed to be concerned for his nephew?”

“That ain’t what you’re asking sir. Respectfully.” Ito leaned back, eyes wandering to the blue, blue sky while they searched their memory. “Well. When the storm hit it was easy at first, sway with the wind, three points of contact and all that, pray the crew hears your warning. The crew was in their lines, passing down the messages and such, so at the beginning everything was fine, we were just going through a choppy patch of weather. Or so we thought until the sky changed. I swear it was quicker than a rabbiroo bolting from a foxhound.

“So things got a little harder, so what, but then the wind really picks up and rain starts sheeting down over the metal of the deck. And then _Suzuran_ begins to rock in the waves. I couldn’t really see much after that, and I’m a trifle embarassed to say that I had to sit down to try and stop myself from being flung off. Then suddenly the ship slows and I know the connection’s lost and the next thing I see is the prince crawling up into the perch.”

“And after that?” Iroh prompts quietly, hiding dragon’s fangs behind a porcelain cup.

“After that he asks me something about chanties and i answered as best I could. I don’t really remember. You know that Zuko’s good with a chanty? I don’t know where he pulled those verses from.” Ito coughed. “Apologies General, getting off topic. So he sings out this chanty to, what, organize the crewmembers, and we all join in because it was admittedly very catchy, but we weren’t the only ones that joined in.”

Ito paused, took a sip. It really was good tea. They wondered where Iroh had gotten it so far away from the fire nation capital, as far as they were aware there weren’t any colonies that carried it. Iroh was relaxed in his chair, at least at first glance, but his limbs were held slightly too rigid, slightly too poised to be anything other than burning inside.

“I’m not quite sure what happened, in the adrenaline of the moment it didn’t matter except for the song- It pulled me in, like a siren’s call, no matter how rough it was. Then They started to show up and joined in and it wasn’t so rough anymore.” Ito stilled, the liquid in their cup swirling a little. They could see the steady glow of eerie lights somewhere in the depths of an endless vaulting sky, the creaking of the metal, something in themself flare up at the sight of a child standing where they should never have to stand. “I think it was beautiful.”

Iroh put down the teacup with a clink against the saucer. His gaze had softened to something thoughtful. “I see.”

The room was quiet. Ito coughed raggedly behind a hand, reaching for the cough suppressant Yuko, the doctor had prescribed where it sat in a small basket hanging from the ceiling. Iroh handed it to them gently, and watched as they swallowed away the aftertaste with another sip of tea. 

“Sir,” They spoke quietly into the still air. “What are you going to do?”

“I think I’ll have a talk with Doctor Yuko about spirit hauntings.” And perhaps get some answers about why, for all the spirits he could see, he didn’t see the ones following his nephew.

  
  



End file.
